Margaret Virginia Ping was born May 11, 1912 in Liberal, Missouri to James J. and Ruth Blevans Ping. When Margaret was four the family moved to Hardin, Montana, where her parents ran a dry goods store. After earning an A.B. from Oberlin College in 1933, she went on to complete an M.A. in religious education at Teachers College in New York City. Ping's long career with the YWCA began in 1936 when she took a job as Girl Reserve Secretary for the YWCA in Pueblo, Colorado. She continued Girl Reserve work in Pittsburgh (1938-43) and then Detroit (1943-44) becoming Executive of Detroit's Southwest Center in 1944. Ping joined the national YWCA staff in September of 1945, going to work in Mexico for the International Division. Upon her return to the U.S. in 1955, Ping worked in local YWCAs in Boston and Billings, Montana, then once again joined the national staff in September 1964 working as a field consultant in the Central Region. In 1968-69 she went to Peru as a consultant to a group forming a YWCA in Lima. After retiring from the YWCA in 1970, Ping returned to Hardin, Montana to care for her father. She worked in the Outreach Program at Rocky Mountain College in Billings for four years and was instrumental in helping to establish the Big Horn County Historical Museum. In the mid-1980s Ping began to work to bring Habitat for Humanity to Montana, an effort that resulted in the founding of the Mid-Yellowstone Valley chapter in 1993. She is the author of three books, Looking Back, Moving Forward: The History of the Billings YWCA, 1907-1988 (1991), Three Defining Years in a Long Life (2010), and Letters Home from the Mexico I Knew (2012)
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From the guide to the Margaret Ping Papers MS 700., 1933-1954, (Sophia Smith Collection)
